Van Leuuwen’s concept of sociosemantic inventory (1990)

Critical discourse analysis aims to investigate how social practices and power structures are presented and evaluated in discourses. Critical discourse analysis focuses on the construction of social realities in discourses. (Van Leuuwen, 2018.) Critical discourse analysis is a parent category for a large variety of different theoretical and methodological approaches as well as analytical frameworks. One defining factor used for different critical discourse analysis approaches is the interest towards power

structures, power relating to differences in social structures and how these get presented in language and discourse. (Weiss & Wodak, 2003.) In his framework, Van Leuuwen (1990) has combined critical discourse analysis practices with sociosemantic features, creating a sociosemantic inventory framework that can be utilized for analyzing social actors, social actor presentations and power relations between different social actors in discourses (SemiotiX, 2019).

Critical discourse analysis and the ways that written discourses recontextualize social actors have been the main subjects of work for Van Leuuwen. He first utilized and introduced the concept of sociosemantic inventory in analyzing ”Spectrum”, the Saturday publication of Sydney Morning Herald on the 12th of May in 1990. Sydney Morning Herald is a conservative newspaper, and Van Leuuwen analyzed the leading feature article ”Our Race Odyssey”. (Cross, 2008.) The sociosemantic inventory framework was aimed to address two questions: ”What are the ways in which social actors can be represented in discourse?” and ”Which choices does the English language give us for referring to people?” (Van Leuuwen, 1995: 31). These are the general, lasting questions the framework aims to give tools to answer to, but in analyzing ”Our Race Odyssey” Van Leuuwen specifically focused on identifying instances of racist discourse from the news story concerning immigration. In this particular analytic work, Van Leuuwen identified textual choices emphasizing the ”otherness” of immigrants from the main pain part of the population as well as conceptions of ”differentness” and how immigrants were ”threatening” for the society (in evoking fears of losing cultural identity and practical employment opportunities). (Van Leuuwen, 1995). The whole system network for the concept of sociosemantic inventory in total consists of 22 categories (Van Leuuwen, 1995).

Van Leuuwen’s concept of sociosemantic inventory (1990) is the chosen framework of critical discourse analysis applied in this study, using five categories that seem most suitable for the analysis purposes of this paper. Many social actors in the data get described rather superficially, so there is not enough detail for analytical use of some of the more elaborated categories. For the five selected categories, there was enough detail in the description of the social actors in the data.

These following socio-semantic categories of Van Leuuwen’s (1995) framework will be applied for analysing the social actors in the articles.

• inclusion or exclusion of the social actors

According to van Leuuwen (1995) exclusion is divided into subcategories; radical and less radical exclusion, meaning total and partial exclusion. A radical exclusion means that a social actor or their action is completely excluded from a text in a manner that leaves no trace. The exclusion is unnoticeable. Inclusion or exclusion of an actor can be also social class-based and a politically

motivated choice in a text, in which case the more high-end social actors of the hierarchy would more likely be included than excluded in for example middle-class or conservative newspapers. The social actors presenting the ”common people” would be more likely excluded in middle-class or conservative newspapers. Exclusion of a social actor can be further categorized to suppression and backgrounding. The choice to include or exclude a social actor in the text is usually to suit the readers and according to the purposes of the writer. (Van Leuuwen, 1995.)

• passive or active forms in describing actions of the social actors

Which social actors are given active or passive roles and in which institutional and social contexts?

Individuals in activated roles appear as the active, influential makers in activity and often possessing a voice and commenting on issues. In contrast in the passive roles, individuals appear often on the receiving end of an activity or as if they were merely undergoing or withstanding actions and often not having a say on things. Activation of a social actor is noticeably by grammatical participant roles in the discourses or by pre- or postmodifications or by giving possessive forms. Passivated social actors in discourses are allocated for example beneficialised or subjected roles. Which social actors are referred to through generic or specific reference is also to be observed when looking for activation or passivation in social role allocations. (Van Leuuwen, 1995.)

• functionalisation or identification of social actors

Social actors presented in functionalised roles are described according to the activities they engage in or their professional or other roles. Functionalised social roles are often observable in verb derived terms ending to some of the following suffixes: -er, -ant, -ent, -iant, and -ee. Examples of such terms would be reporter, participant, interviewee, patient, guardian and employee. Identification of social actors means that they are referred to according to what they are in more or less permanent way.

Classification categories for the identificated social actors vary according to the societal and institutional conceptions dividing people to different classes and subgroups. In Western societies, these categories include for example age, gender, class, wealth, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and provenance. (Van Leuuwen, 1995.)

• individualisation or assimilation of the social actors

Individualisation here refers to when a social actor is singled out and individualised, and assimilation to a practice where social actors are referred to as a group. Van Leuuwen (1995) indicated this to be an important category to analyze, as individuality is a very highly valued concept, especially in many Western societies. Assimilation here is looked into through the process of aggregation. Assimilation

as aggregation treats groups of people as a sort of statistics, what majority of the people think is meaningful in societies where majorities rule. Aggregation is most often noticeably by the use of definite or indefinite quantifiers. (Van Leuuwen, 1995.)

• personalization or impersonalization of the social actors

Social actors are personalized by referring to them with their names, using personal or possessive pronouns in connection to them or by representing them as human beings. Social actors can be impersonalized by representing them with abstract nouns or by using concrete nouns which do not include the conception of a human being. Impersonalization can take forms of abstraction and objectivation. Personalization/impersonalization is a crucial category for identifying power construction in social structures of news reporting. (Van Leuuwen, 1995.)